1. Field
The present invention relates generally to a hay bale accumulator. More particularly, the present invention relates to an improved square hay bale accumulator that receives bales from a hay baler and groups them in a ten-bale group for easy pick-up and stacking.
2. Background of the Invention and Prior Art
Hay bale accumulators are used for collecting square bales of hay into close groups of a fixed number of bales so that they may be easily loaded and moved. Before the invention and use of hay bale accumulators, bales of hay ejected from the hay baler in a field would have to be picked up one at a time and manually loaded onto a truck or wagon. Because individual bales are heavy and unwieldy, and because the hay baler drops them off twenty to thirty feet apart from one another, collecting and loading bales of hay was a difficult and time-consuming task.
Hay bale accumulators make the job of collecting and loading bales of hay far easier. A typical hay bale accumulator is pulled behind the baler and collects the bales as they are ejected from the hay baler and then arranges them while they are dragging along the ground in an accumulator frame into a close rectangular grouping of bales, in a single layer with as many as 8-12 bales total. The accumulator then releases the neat grouping of bales onto the field, where the grouping can be picked up as a unit by mechanical lifting devices or special bale forks and loaded onto a wagon or trailer for removal from the field. With the aid of an accumulator, no manual lifting or stacking of bales is required.
Hay bale accumulators of the type discussed and disclosed herein are those in which the hay bales drag on the ground behind a hay baler while constrained within the open framework of the accumulator, as opposed to the type in which the hay bales are accumulated on some type of platform or trailer.
An example of a prior art hay bale accumulator is disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,779,402, which discloses an accumulator capable of grouping eight (8) bales of hay, in two (2) rows of four (4) bales each. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,053,064 discloses an accumulator for grouping a number of bales. In each of these prior art inventions, however, the bales of hay are all arranged in a grouping in which each bale is lined up in the same direction. For example, the hay bale accumulator disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,053,064 is capable of arranging bales as shown in FIG. 1 (in which eight bales are labeled “A”-“H” in the order in which they are collected and aligned by the accumulator). It would be desirable for the hay bales to be grouped so that some of the bales are turned at an angle to the other bales, because this configuration of bales stacks better than if the bales are all turned in the same direction. Specifically, if the bales on one end of the grouping are turned at right angles to the bales on the other end, as is shown in FIG. 2 (in which ten bales are labeled “A” through “I” in the order that the bales are collected by the accumulator) then when multiple layers of bales are stacked, the resultant stack is more stable.
Further, it would be desirable to have a hay bale accumulator that provides this improved configuration of bales in a ten-bale grouping.